1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lock, especially to a lock for universal serial bus ports.
2. Description of the Prior Arts
As computer technology advances and notebooks and computer are developed for specialist needs, peripherals have been developed to cater for these specialist needs. The peripherals have their own connectors to connect to corresponding ports of the computers. Connection compatibility was greatly enhanced by universal serial bus (USB) connectors, a uniform connection between most peripherals and computers.
The connection compatibility was further improved by development automatic driver configuration software in operating systems, such as Microsoft Corporations, plug-and-play system for Windows. The automatic driver configuration software detects when a peripheral is connected using the USB port and automatically finds a corresponding driver for the peripheral. Therefore, the peripheral can be used after plugging into the computer through the USB port without manually installing any drivers.
However, improved connection compatibility for USB peripherals has created security issues for hardware owners, especially public use computers including schools, libraries, internet cafe's and the like, since every user can plug portable memory devices into the computer to download and upload any information and program. Confidential information is easily downloaded, or the computer may be intentionally targeted with malware including viruses, worms Trojan horses and the like.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention provides a lock for locking a universal serial bus port to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.